MONTGOMERY — America is on the verge of losing “a lot of farmers” if Congress doesn’t act soon, according to Alabama Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries Commissioner Rick Pate.
Congress is considering including economic assistance for farmers in a government funding bill that will likely be voted on later this week.
“I think agriculture, we’ve gone through a rough couple of years, this year and the year before now. During Covid, surprisingly farmers did pretty well because of a lot of the government programs. If we don’t get some help like real soon, then we’re going to lose a lot of farmers. I’ve heard people say as many as 100,000. We’re steadily losing them,” Pate told reporters on Tuesday in Montgomery.
Pate continued, “We don’t have six months to wait. Some of our farmers are not going to be able to plant in the spring if they don’t have some security about the financing and the debt that they’re currently carrying.”
“They might can wait until January. I don’t think they can fool around until March with this thing. They’re going to have to get the farm bill going, get some emergency money out. A few commodities that are hugely important to our economy: corn, cotton, beans. Across the board nobody made money. Not the good farmers, not the bad farmers. It’s just the model didn’t work, so we can’t let all those people go out of business,” Pate said.
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